Knock, Knock ....

sermon by Torin Eikler
Jeremiah 17:5-10 Luke 6:17-26

Knock, knock …
Who’s there?
Sebastian.
Sebastian who?
Sebastian Thomas.

A couple of weeks ago, my mother introduced Sebastian to “knock, knock” jokes for the first time, and he fell in love. His first attempts were all the same – exactly what you just heard followed by uproarious laughter. But, slowly, he has become a little more sophisticated. He now puts the first name of anyone or anything in the joke and finishes it with the second name … or something totally silly, and follows up with a “HAAA.”

Of course, we play along for awhile - or for as long as our patience holds out. Then, we try to move the game to a different level. At first, we used our personal favorites, jokes like:
knock, knock …
who’s there?
Doctor.
Doctor who?
How did you know?

But, all of our favorites are way above Sebastian’s head, and they just get a blank stare or a polite chuckle before he returns to his own particular style. As things drag on, we work our way back toward his developmental level until we get to jokes that just ahead of where he is.

Just a few days ago, we were once again engaged in an epic knock, knock fest, and I remembered one that I hadn’t used before....
knock, knock …
who’s there?
Atch.
Atch who?
Bless you!

And, as Sebastian worked it through and began to laugh a little, I started to think about that oh-so-common winter benediction – “Bless you.” Why do we say that? Where did it come from? And what, exactly, does it mean?

There are any number of explanations out there, and they range from a wish for others to get better to an expression of our sympathy to a prayer offered for someone on the verge of death. (That last one comes from a belief that a person’s heart stops during the moment of a sneeze and may not always start again.) But they all assume that we know what it means to be blessed, and I wonder if we really do.

Since I don’t know myself, I looked it up. A couple of online resources, including Wikipedia of course, list blessing as “a type of religious pronouncement,” “[protecting or guarding] from evil,” and “[requesting] the bestowal of divine favor” which are the definitions we are familiar with. The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms adds “[offering] praise” as in the Psalmist’s “O Bless the Lord, my soul.”

But another definition that is more pertinent for us today is “to convey favor.” That is what Jesus was doing in the sermon we have recorded in Luke. The people – the crowd that was committed to following him and listening to his teachings – were gathered around him to receive all that he had to give. And he responded to them by conveying favor upon them.

Judging by the message he gave them, they were all poor people - or at least mostly. They were hungry, and they suffered due to their position in society. By all traditional worldly measures, they would have been considered unlucky. By some religious interpretations of the day they would have been considered cursed. They came to Jesus for hope and healing and he gave them both, curing illness and infirmity, casting out demons, and telling them that despite the world’s judgment they were still special to God.

“Knock, knock,” they said with hopeful resignation.
“Who’s there?”
“The poor – the hungry and suffering.”
“Laugh for God loves you, and you will have all you need.”


And then there’s the other half of the message – the woes. The rich there in the crowd must have felt awfully good when they heard blessings pronounced on the poor. If the poor were to be blessed then certainly they would be too - maybe even more so. If conventional wisdom was to believed, their wealth was already a strong sign of the favor of God. So, they were sitting pretty, and in my imagination I can almost see the smiles spreading across their faces, the excited laughter building in their chests.

But it was short-lived pleasure, as we know. When their turn came, there were no reassuring words; no promises of a bright future … not even a hint of approval. Jesus turned to them and pronounced woe. “Woe to you who are full, woe to you who enjoy life now, woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation already.”

If blessing someone is conveying favor, “woe-ing” someone (if there is such a word) is just the opposite. Jesus was making it clear that God was not particularly pleased with the wealthy. And though the story is not explicit about why that was the case, there are some clues to help us understand.

One of them is hiding in Jesus’ reference to the Kingdom of God. We usually think of the Kingdom as a thing of the future - a time when the world will reflect God’s true sense of justice and equity. The first will be last and the last will be first, but really there will not be a first or a last because everyone will be equal thanks to the grace and mercy of God.

But remember that Israel was also the Kingdom of God. It was the place given to the chosen people according to the covenant that Abraham made. And it was fundamentally a Theocracy where God sat “enthroned” in the Temple and governed the people through the law of Moses – a law that spoke often about caring for the poor. Being rich and standing in the midst of a crowd of the poor shows, at best, a shocking level of ignorance and, at worst, a blatant disregard for the will of God. Is it any surprise, then, that Jesus pronounces disfavor on the wealthy?

But, The second and more telling reason disfavor is implied in the last set of blessings and woes – in the mention of the prophets. Throughout the history of Israel, the prophets called the people back to the heart of their faith and the spirit behind the law. The words we heard from Jeremiah this morning sum it up pretty well:

“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They [are] like a tree planted by water [which] does not cease to bear fruit.” And, “cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength. They [are] like a shrub in the desert [which] lives in the parched places of the wilderness.”

As R. Alan Culpepper understands the pronouncement of blessings and woes in Jesus’ sermon, this is at the heart of the message. The poor are blessed because they rely on God. The world and the people around them have failed them, and they have nowhere else to turn. So, they have come to Jesus trusting that through him their God will provide.

The rich, on the other hand, are in trouble because they struggle with that kind of trust. Their wealth brings them confidence in their own ability to provide for themselves. The respect and admiration they receive from others makes them proud and gives them a feeling of power and control. And, that self-reliance … that faith in their own strength is their downfall. It gets in the way of genuine dependence on God’s provident care and stops their ears to the invitation to live according the ways of the Kingdom.[1]

“Knock, knock,” they said with confident boldness.
“Who’s there?”
“The rich – the happy and content.”
“Mourn for what could be and take what happiness you can,
for you do not hear the voice of God.”


You know, what’s interesting to me is that we don’t hear this version of the beatitudes all that often. We don’t teach our children to learn it by heart. We are much happier with Matthew’s version – the one that reads, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” And so on.

I wonder if that has anything to do with the stark clarity of the text in Luke. Where Matthew says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” Luke says, “Blessed are you who are poor.” That makes it hit home in a different way. Jesus seems to be speaking directly to us, and there is no wiggle room for us to escape the truth that we are not poor. There is no “poor in spirit” to retreat to– whatever that means. And without that loophole, we start to get a squirmy, uncomfortable feeling as we realize that we may be – we probably are – among those who received judgment instead of blessing.

So, what do we do with that feeling? Is there any hope for us or should we just put aside our sense of guilt and hide from the fear as we do so often? The easy answer, the one that I really want to give you because it’s the one I really want to hear, is that everything will be okay. Do what you can to follow the teachings of Christ. Reach out in compassion to help the poor and alleviate the suffering you see around you. Ask forgiveness for the times you fail. And God, in the strength of unbounded love, will hear your prayers and bless you. And there is truth in that.

The truer answer – or maybe the more complete answer – is not so easy to hear. There is hope, but it lies in another direction. We find it not when we use our riches to help those around us, but when we let go of our need to take control of the situation and follow the leading of God. For some of us, like for the rich young ruler, that could mean getting rid of stuff – maybe even selling or giving away things we cherish or are most proud of. For some of us that may mean giving up habits or activities that have more of a hold on us than we have on them. For most of us it will mean reevaluating our goals and priorities to see how well the line up with God’s.

However difficult those tasks may be, that is the way. Whatever it is that plugs the ears of our soul, we need to clear it out so that we can hear the Voice calling to us. Whatever blinds the eyes of our hearts, we need to wash it away so that we see the path on which the Spirit would lead us. Whatever leads us to mistake our weakness for strength – and we all have something … whatever it is, it holds us back from trusting in God, and our hope lies in letting it go and grabbing hold of God.


Every day we choose whether we lean into God – to become the poor in spirit even though that may lead us to actually become poor in fact – or we lean into the power and control our wealth affords. We all have to make that choice. We all do make that choice. It may sound harsh, but as Jesus makes clear, it is a truth that we cannot avoid especially as we prepare to enter the season of Lent.

Will we hold onto our illusions of grandeur or will we let them go?

Will we plant ourselves by the living water and bear fruit or will we be shrubs in the desert becoming nothing but tumbleweeds?

Will we hear words of blessing or a pronouncement of woe?

When we knock and Jesus says, “Who’s there?” what will we say?


[1] The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary. Volume IX, 144.